Wednesdays Reflection..

Todays photo was a moment snapped in time that I will never forget! There was so much going on in our lives at the time. Braden was 5 years old and getting ready for kindergarten and Kailey was one year old when this picture was taken.
During this moment, Paul was finishing our basement, you know drywalling, painting and framing. He had taken a year off of work to help rehabilitate Braden and get him physically strong enough to handle being in school. I wanted him to be as strong as possible before I set him out into the big bad world of kindergarten. I have never really admitted this before, but I am sure many of you probably realized at the time that my hopes and dreams were pretty far fetched. I mean, there is always hope and a person should never really "say never" because you just never know the will power of any one person. So with that said, when this picture was snapped the only important thing in my life was to get my son walking again. Nothing else was of importance to me, I was not enjoying life, I hated that Braden was not walking, I was having difficulty accepting that he would not be the same as the other children...deep down I knew it wasn't fair to him! I hated feeling the guilt of that!
In my mind I so desperatly wanted to believe that Braden was going to recover remarkably and eventually have the ability to walk just like the other little boys. I wanted him to play sports, rough house, dance, and "just be" like the others.
Boy was I in for a learning curve. Let me tell you when my plan wasn't working like I thought it should, my life went to hell.
It hasn't always been easy, the mind can be cruel...especially when you feel so much guilt and pain over a situation that you feel responsible for. This year was probably the toughest of them all. It wasn't that I couldn't function or be a good mother at this time, because nothing stopped me from putting those emotions on a shelf and leave them there when spending time with the kids. However, each feeling and each emotion was like reading through a long long novel. Ok, so this is how I can best describe the feelings that I felt during this year of my life. It was challenging at the time to go through all the emotions that a person feels when hit with a catastrophe. The best way for me to explain it, will be to refer to each emotion whether being guilt, anger or sadness as a book, or a chapter in a book. Each emotion is so different, and should be treated as so. Emotions have stages and chapters that you have to work through, putting time and effort into each chapter, at times re-reading certain feelings and going back to that book of anger on the shelf, opening it up and accepting it for what it was. I kinda feel that this explanation suits it, because its not like I went around everyday feeling guilty or sad, as a mother I still had to function and get out of bed each day and take care of my children. They came first, this was not an option..I still had a responsibility to those kids. So, everytime I started to feel upset or sad with a situation I would close it up and put it away (on a shelf) until I could put the time and effort into it...sort of like a book. This year in particular was the one that changed my life forever, it was a choice at this time...am I going to read these books and work through them or am I going to leave them on the shelf and always know in the back of my mind that they are there and will always be.
I am not sure if this is a good analogy or not, sometimes it so challenging putting words on paper and hoping the one reading it can understand what the writer is trying to say.
I often tell people when struck by tradegy that the pain of the event won't hit you untill later...sometimes years later. It worked that way for me. During the intial times after my accident, we were to busy to even think of the events of the day. Who has time to cry? Who has time to eat or sleep? You just survive...its all time allows!
Today sometimes, one of those emotions on the shelf will creep up on me. There are still some bad days...more commonly bad moments and when this happens I remember the things that I've learned through the healing process and remind myself that today is a blessing. It has taken me 14 years to accept the things I cannot change, I will never say that he will never walk...but I have accepted that if he doesn't..it's ok! There is so much more to him than whether or not he can walk, he is a huge success and much of my guilt has been replaced with pride...and that book, the book of pride... is never closed!!